Succinic acid (SA) was identified by the Department of Energy, US,1 as a platform chemical that will have a very high market in the near future. It plays a major role as a building block in synthesis of several polymers.2-3 It has several applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, biopolymers, polyesters, polyurethane, plasticizers and fine chemical industries:4-5 In 2007, a market of 15 billion USD was projected for the chemicals which can be synthesized from succinic acid.6 However, it has failed to reach such growth in production due to the high costs involved in its production. In 2015, the global production was 58.5 kilotons7 and it is projected to reach 251.3 kilotons worth 701.0 million USD by 2022.7 
Conventional industrial production of succinic acid involves the chemical conversion of maleic acid using heterogeneous metal catalysts like Pd/C and Zn/Hg.4 Though the yields of SA are high, concerns on the use of petroleum based resources and expensive catalysts motivate researchers to look for alternative raw materials. Renewable substrates like agricultural and forest based residues have high potential for the production of succinic acid. However, its production from renewable lignocellulosic raw material is ,not carried out in industrial level due to the lack of cost effective processes to overcome low product yields. Studies indicate that the US, for example, produces approximately 1 billion tons of inedible biomass from forests and agricultural lands.8 Therefore, several researchers are exploring alternate routes for the production of SA from low value substrates to reduce the overall production costs involved.
Microbial fermentation of various substrates like hexose, pentoses and glycerol using Actinobacillus succinogenes,9 Mannheimia succiniciproducensl10 and Anaerobiospirillum succiniciproducens11 have been reported. Though fermentative yields are high, the downstream processing costs limit the use of these methods. For example, in Canada, BioAmber is one of the recently established industries for the production of biosuccinic acid. Other companies such as Riverdia, BASF—Corbion, Myriant and PTT MCC Biochem located at different parts of the world are also showing great interest in production of bio-succinic acid. However, its production is from corn starch12 and not from inedible biomass like cellulose. Succinic acid produced from fermentation was estimated to cost 2.2 USD per kilogram with a production level of 5000 tons per year.13 However, it has been projected that the price would drop to 0.55 USD if the production level increases to 75000 tons per year.13 Alternative routes reported in literature for the production of succinic acid include the oxidation of 1,4-butanediol with nitric acid,14 carbonylation of ethylene glycol, ethylene, acetylene, dioxane,3 hydrogenation of fumaric acid in presence of Ru catalyst,15 and condensation of acetonitrile to produce butanedinitrile which can be subsequently hydrolyzed to succinic acid.16-17 Recent studies have shown that succinic acid can also be produced from furfural using a chemical conversion pathway without a metal catalyst,18 for example, oxidation of levulinic acid using hydrogen peroxide.19 
Choudhary et al. (2013) have reported that carboxylic acids like succinic acid can be synthesized from furan derivatives through the oxidative process using hydrogen peroxide in the presence of acid catalyst.4 They have reported that Amberlyst-15 is an efficient replacement for the homogeneous acid catalyst in the oxidation of furans in water. Amberlyst-15 is a sulfonated polystyrene based ion-exchange resin with 4.7 mmol/g acidity.20 It has a similar effect as sulfuric acid (H2SO4) in the synthesis of carboxylic acids from furan derivatives.21 The heterogeneous catalyst, Amberlyst-15 has an advantage because it exists in solid phase and can be recycled easily for the oxidation reactions of furan derivatives like furfural, hydroxymethyl furfural, furoic acid etc. These furan derivatives are usually obtained from hexose and pentose sugars of edible and inedible crops. However, limited information is available in literature for the use of renewable resources such as hemicellulose prehydrolysate from agriculture or forest residue for the production of carboxylic acids such as succinic acid.
Xylose in hemicellulose can be converted to furfural which can then be converted to succinic acid. The major problem associated with the conversion of xylose to succinic acid is that furfural, an intermediate in this process, polymerizes and undergoes side reactions to form undesired products. It is important to avoid these side reactions during such conversions without loss in the substrate.